


Sent by Who I Used to Be

by beautifultoastdream



Series: Carolina Dreaming [3]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Amnesia, But he's trying, Character Study, Craig Boone is bad at people, Friendship, Gen, Identity, Light Angst, Lily is too good for this sinful earth, Mysterious tattoo, Pre-Relationship, Some Humor, The courier isn't much better tbh, downtime, friends - Freeform, the whole gang - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29599800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: After losing her memories to Benny's bullets, the Courier is a stranger in her own body. The discovery of a tattoo on her back leads to questions that she can't answer, and she's left wondering who she really is and what she knows about herself.Fortunately, she has allies to help her keep her balance ... Or to keep an eye on the horizon, anyway.
Relationships: Craig Boone & Female Courier
Series: Carolina Dreaming [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2149269
Kudos: 8





	Sent by Who I Used to Be

**Author's Note:**

> This story picks up some themes and tidbits from "Five Hundred Yards of Perspective" and "Deliver Me," so I do recommend reading those first. However, it can be a standalone without too much confusion. The TL;DR is that Carolina is an amnesiac melee-focused courier who remembers almost nothing but the Couriers' Rules, the guidelines a wasteland courier must follow in order to survive.

“Oh, pumpkin! You’re far too young for that sort of thing!”

Lily is using her sweetest voice, which means that only the entire group hears—rather than the group, the environs, and every Legion patrol in a five-mile radius. Unfortunately, Carolina has no idea what she’s talking about.

They’ve stopped for the night on the outskirts of Old Vegas, after a run on the Sunset Sarsaparilla factory. (It turns out that plenty of people will pay to have crates of the stuff delivered by human hands, rather than robots, and after said robots rather rudely tried to kill her, Carolina considers taking a few crates of sarsaparilla to be fair payback.) Their chosen way station is an old two-room house, really just a cabin. Simple arrangements: one room for the guys, one for the girls. Reduces the awkwardness when people have to change armor, just like Carolina was doing five seconds ago before Lily spoke up.

Carolina turns, frowning. The Nightkin is standing by the door, a strange expression on her face. Is it … disappointment?

“What?” Carolina says. She’s down to her tank top and shorts, which is all she wants on a hot Mojave night.

“I know, sweetie.” A hand bigger than a power fist gently pats her head, flattening her bun and making her neck ache. “The little ones grow up so fast these days! But you don’t need to be doing that kind of thing just yet. You’re too young. And it’s such a big decision to make.”

“What?” Carolina is now thoroughly confused. Lily shakes her head.

“It might seem like he’s the only one for you, but times change. And when you get grown up and your husband sees that, well, he’s going to be a little jealous.”

Cass pokes her head into the room. “What’s goin’ on in here? Something wrong?”

“I don’t know. I was just taking off my armor—“

“And I saw her little secret.” Lily shakes her head again. “Pumpkin is just too young for that. Honestly, her momma should be talking to her about these kinds of things.”

Her secret? Is that some grandmotherly euphemism? Carolina looks down hurriedly, but she’s definitely still wearing her shorts. Tank top, too. Sure, it’s ridden up in the back, and she cut a few inches off it a while ago when the edges got so badly frayed … it’s more like a long bra now. But it still does the job.

As she twists, checking that everything is still covered, Cass lets out an “Oooh” of comprehension. “I see it!” she says. “Who’s M.S.?”

“What?” Carolina is starting to feel like she’s taken a hit of something. Or maybe there’s a gas pipe leaking. “What’s an M.S.?”

“In the Old World, it was an abbreviation for manuscript,” Arcade calls from the other room. “But I doubt that’s relevant. Miss Cassidy, what’s going on over there? Some of us aren’t on watch for another four hours yet and need our beauty sleep.”

Cass is grinning. “Courier’s got a tattoo!”

… _what?_

The dumbfounded look must have been stunningly obvious, because Cass’s expression softens. “You didn’t remember?” she says.

Mute, Carolina shakes her head.

“Oh, jeez. Ronnie! Need your mirror!”

“What for?” Veronica yells.

“Courier! Tattoo! Need to show her!”

“Courier has a tattoo?”

In moments, Veronica’s joined Lily and Cass in the room. Rex bounds along, happy just to see something happening. Raul tries to peer around the lintel, but Lily lets out a roar of “No peeking, dear!” and blocks the door.

Boone’s up on the roof, doing his shift on watch. Carolina hides her face in her hands, feeling the familiar terrifying sensation of too many eyes on her, and thanks any deity caring to listen for small favors. Raul is blocked, Boone is on watch, and Arcade is too lazy to peek: that halves the number of people looking.

“I … I have a tattoo,” she says at last.

Veronica nods. “On your back. Right side of the ribs.”

“Perfect target for a kidney shot,” Cass contributes helpfully.

“I don’t think that’s why it’s there,” Carolina manages to say. “What is it?”

Veronica brings out the mirror. There’s a few moments of struggle, but finally they have it places where Carolina can see the reflection without breaking her own neck.

Yes. A tattoo. Once black, now faded to blue-gray. A crude drawing of a pair of horns, the letters M.S., and a date—about eight years ago now.

Carolina’s head is spinning. An eight-year-old tattoo. The date means nothing to her: a death? A marriage? A birth? The horns might be a Legion affiliation (oh, no, anything but that!). Or is it even a symbol? Did she just like the design? Did she draw it? Is that why it’s so crude?

And who or what is M.S.?

All at once, Carolina feels sick.

She drops the mirror as the world reels around her. She hears Veronica shout—faintly, as if through a thick layer of cloth—as she stumbles and falls back, landing half-on and half-off the stained mattress she’s claimed. The others are shouting and someone calls for Arcade, but she can’t think.

M.S.?

Is that all she has now?

These are the facts, as she’s known them for six months. Her name is Carolina. She’s twenty-eight years old, probably. She remembers the Couriers’ Rules of the Mojave Express, and can recite them in her sleep (Rule One: Don’t rely on a weapon you have to reload. Rule Two: Don’t make enemies. Rule Three: Someone will try to rob you), but of friends and family … nothing.

She’s fairly certain she likes men, at least. To her own deep and abiding shame, she’s snuck a few glances at Boone once or twice. She’d never ask him—never try to hurt him—but she knows what she likes to look at. So M.S. could be a man. But is it even a loved one? How much did the bullets scramble?

Eight years ago. She could have been married at twenty, which would be worth a tattoo. Or lost a parent. Or given birth to a child. Doc Mitchell wouldn’t have been able to tell her if she’d had a baby: he wasn’t really looking that far down.

She’s dimly aware of hands on her, and a bright light shining into her eyes. She winces, and the world begins to take shape again.

Arcade is kneeling in front of her, shining a flashlight into her eyes. His expression is anxious behind his glasses, and he’s saying something she can’t quite hear. Behind him looms a huge blue-and-green wall: Lily, her teeth-bared rictus somehow more concerned than usual, wringing those enormous hamhock hands.

“Courier,” Arcade is saying. The words finally arrive, slowly and reluctantly, as if traveling from far away at a substandard rate and without paying extra for careful handling. “Courier. _Carolina._ Look at me.”

She blinks. “What?”

“Thank goodness.” Arcade rakes a hand through his hair and peers more closely at her eyes, watching how the pupils dilate. “Everything’s responsive … Follow the light. Left. Right. Good. How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two.”

“And now?”

“Three.”

“And now?”

“One very rude one.”

Someone lets out a bark of strained laughter behind him, and Arcade grins.

“That’s better,” he says. “You had us worried there, courier. Can you sit up?”

“I … yes. Of course.”

She sits up, carefully. She knocked her shoulder on the wall at some point during her collapse, and it aches, but nowhere near enough to demand a shot of anything. She’ll go outside and press herself against the cold tile around the empty pool, and that will dull the ache.

“Are you all right?” Veronica says worriedly.

Cass snorts. “She hasn’t quoted some random-ass rule in nearly five seconds. Of course she isn’t all right.”

Which is blunt, and rude, but not a lie.

Not that Carolina will say it. **Courier Rule Number Eleven: You are the product. Make yourself worth purchasing.** A courier must appear reliable if they want to get hired, and faints and panic fits aren’t part of that.

“I’m fine,” she says instead. “And alive. An occasional headache is a decent price to pay for that.”

* * *

They don’t believe her, but they get the message. The courier doesn’t want to talk about it. They’ll talk among themselves—they always do, and she’s glad for it, because she wants them to have some kind of friendship and connection with each other, if they can’t have it from her.

And they can’t. Not really.

She wants to. So badly. To have friends, and a quiet life, and a full name, and a job that asks no more from her than carrying the mail. But to have those things, you need to be alive first. You need to be a person. You need to know why you do what you do, and where you started from, and what you believe. You need to know that you aren’t actually their enemy.

Those horns could mean anything. A Bighorner farm. A pair of powder horns, the old-style kind some of the ranchers like. A private joke. A meaningless design. Or a bull.

They give her space. The other women stop talking about her mysterious tattoo. Raul goes back to reading an old “Tales of Chivalrie” he picked up somewhere. Arcade gets back to his interrupted beauty sleep.

Carolina goes outside. She leans against the wall, and oh, she was right: the cold concrete soothes the ache in her shoulder.

“All quiet.”

The voice is soft. A simple statement of fact.

She steps away from the wall and looks up. The house is small—only one level, and the roof is flat. Behind a chimney, someone now gone had built a little observation post out of a couple of sheets of corrugated metal. It makes as neat a little sniper’s nest as they can ask for out here.

She can’t see Boone’s face or the barrel of his gun. But he’s up there somewhere, lying flat, scanning the horizon through his binoculars and scope. He can stay that way for hours, barely breathing. The only movement is the slow arc of the rifle as he turns to watch each part of the world in turn.

Sounds like a pretty good way to do things, now that she thinks about it. She could do with a little more distance and quiet.

She smiles up at the dark perch. “No big red targets coming over the hills?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Move over, please.”

He doesn’t say anything, just waits. She stretches up and grabs hold of the edge of the roof, using the crumbled remains of a decorative planter as a boost. A moment later, she’s squatting on the rooftop, moving from one knee to another as she shifts into the shadows of the little metal lean-to.

There’s a quiet huff of amusement from the darkness: she knows she sounds like a herd of angry brahmin to him. Stealth isn’t one of her skills.

But her eyes adjust, and there’s Boone, lying on his bedroll with his rifle propped up on an empty ammo box. He discards his sunglasses after nightfall, but the beret stays on. She’s pretty sure he sleeps with it on sometimes.

His rucksack is up here, too, wedged neatly into one corner of the tiny lean-to. Something about that displeases Carolina, though she’s not sure what.

“Nice little post,” she says, settling down cross-legged next to him. The roof tiles are cool under her bare legs: she’s still wearing only her shorts and tank top. “Planning on sleeping up here?”

“Thought so.”

“What about watch rotation? Arcade’s up next.” She smiles. “Are you going to make room for him?”

“He can find his own damn watchpoint,” Boone says flatly. He doesn’t seem to have any particular hatred for the gregarious doctor, but there isn’t a lot of fondness either. Talk about coming from two different worlds.

“Probably a good idea. He’s not much of a sniper, anyway.”

That gets a low snort from her companion.

“What?” she says, faux-indignant.

“Pot. Kettle.”

“I’ll have you know that Sunny Smiles herself once saw me knock _three_ cans off a fence.”

“Luck,” Boone says. “You can’t shoot.”

Perversely, his words somehow please her. In a life full of uncertainty, this much is known: she can’t shoot. It’s an unchangeable fact, and it’s one of the few things she does know about herself. Wherever she came from, whoever she was, she either never handled a gun or left behind at least one very disappointed teacher.

But this is Boone, and he doesn’t want to hear about that. He’s all business. He’d make a good courier.

“Need I remind you about Rule One?” she says instead. “When you run out of ammo, my machete and I will still be going.”

“Is that what your ink is? Your favorite rule?”

Carolina’s smile drops. He’s still looking through his scope and can’t see her expression change. Probably wouldn’t react even if he did: Boone isn’t the kind of person who cares if he’s upset someone.

“You heard,” she says.

“Cassidy was yelling.” His eyes are still fixed on the horizon. “Acting like she’s never woken up with mystery ink.”

“Wait. Cass has tattoos?”

“Dunno.” To her surprise, there’s a tiny crumb of humor in his voice. “I’d bet caps on it, though. Caravaneers do it, just like the army. Go on a bender, wake up in a strange place, hungover, fresh ink … it happens.”

She wonders if he has a story he isn't telling. But that's his business, and she tries not to pry. “You think that’s what happened to me?” she asks instead.

“Maybe. Lemme see it.”

It’s weird, how easily she trusts him. She twists, pulling up the ragged edge of her tank top, and shows him the markings in the moonlight. It isn’t until it’s already bare that she remembers the horns—but he doesn’t flinch or shoot her or anything, just studies it for a moment.

“That’s a scratcher,” he says at last. “Even with bad materials, pros do a better job. You didn’t pay for that. Not much. Probably had a friend do it.”

So that’s one more thing she knows.

“Do you think …” The thought catches in her throat. “There’s horns on it. Is it …?”

He shakes his head. Doesn’t meet her eyes, but then, he almost never does.

“Legion ink looks different. Wouldn’t put it there anyway. Runaway? They’d brand you.”

There’s the tiniest hitch in his voice now. Remembering Carla, no doubt. Remembering what he had to do to save her from a fate worse than death.

“Good,” she says softly. “I didn’t think it was, but …”

“Had to be sure.”

She nods.

“I guess it’s one more thing I have to figure out,” she says. “I’ll add it to the list. Along with deciding how to handle Mr. House, and figuring out who the heck keeps cutting into our transmissions with that ‘Best Friend Tabitha’ junk, and everything else in the Mojave.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. He often doesn’t.

“Worst comes to worst, I can check the records office.” She sighs. That’ll be a job and a half. “Find out everything important that happened on that day eight years ago. Wonder what it was?”

“Dunno,” he says. “Probably nothing.”

“Well, if you ever hear something,” she says, “let me know.”

He grunts again.

That seems to be the end of it, and for a few minutes, it is. She sits there, watching the horizon with him. In the distance, a pair of radscorpions scuttle past, hunting one very unlucky rat. A few droplets of water collect on the corrugated metal, and Carolina touches a fingertip to them, watching the shining beads roll down her skin.

“So,” Boone says at last. “M.S.? What’re you gonna say when someone asks?”

She looks over at him. Trust Boone to see a tattoo as a potential problem.

“I don’t know,” she says at last. “I guess until I remember, I’ll just say … Mysterious Stranger.”


End file.
